Memorial to Angus McBean

Image: © Lairich Rig Taken: 8 Jul 2013

The monument is located in the western half of the Duncan Street burial ground. "A sorrowing flock by whom he was revered and beloved erect this monument to the memory of the Reverend Angus MacBean, Minister of the Gaelic Church and Free Church Gaelic Congregation, Greenock. Born at Croft of Tomatin, Moy, Inverness-shire, 16th November 1785, he departed this life in Greenock, 24th December 1845, after a ministry of twenty-four years. 'An eloquent man and mighty in the scriptures'." (That last phrase quotes the King James Version's rendering of Ac 18:24, which is a description of the preacher Apollos. Tomatin, in the Parish of Moy, is at Image) George Williamson, in his "Old Greenock" (Second Series, 1888), explains that the Gaelic Chapel was built in 1791, opened in 1792, and was constituted a Parish Church quoad sacra by an Act of General Assembly in 1834. Its first minister was Kenneth Bayne, born in Dingwall in 1767, who had previously ministered at the Gaelic Chapel of Ease at Aberdeen. He was admitted to the charge of the Gaelic Chapel at Greenock on the 4th of September 1792. He died on the 13th of April 1821. Williamson, writing in 1888, observes that "then, as now, the sermons were conducted partly in Gaelic, partly in English". Bayne's successor was Angus McBean (his surname is usually so spelled, though not in the inscription), elected to that charge on the 10th of July 1821, and ordained on the 8th of November. He had been educated at King's College, Aberdeen, and had been a schoolmaster at Dores. He was licensed by the Presbytery of Inverness on the 1st of June 1813, became assistant to Hugh Calder at Croy, and from there was elected to Greenock. Williamson, author of "Old Greenock", had at one time had the custody of the manuscript collection of McBean's sermons. A certain Dr McCulloch(*), on examining them, thought them worthy of being preserved in the Library of the Free Church College. However, Angus McBean himself had apparently expressed the wish that, on his death, these manuscripts be committed to the flames, and it seems that his brother, acting as executor, did honour that request. [(*) Dr James Melville McCulloch, minister of the West Parish of Greenock.]

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